New Apple Tech

Posts Tagged ‘apple tablet’

Rumors surrounding the apple tablet have only focused on the looks and not too much of the functionality of the tablet. Text input for the tablet could make or break this device. This has been a problem for apple and other companies for quit a while. CES was filled with tablet devices that couldn’t get it quite right. So the question how do you create text with out a keyboard?

People have been typing without physical keyboards for years now, and this is largely Apple’s doing. One of the major selling points for the iPhone was the onscreen keyboard. Apple was one of the first companies to make onscreen typing bearable.

Now bringing this technology to the Apple tablet, some say could be a big mistake. There were many different tablets at CES nearly all ha d a traditional onscreen keyboards. One tablet stood out however. The android 2.0 keyboard, which is aesthetically different but functionally almost identical to iPhone OSes. The onscreen keyboard as we know it doesn’t scale gracefully, and unless Apple wants their tablet to be completely useless (our sources say they don’t) they’re going to have to figure this out. So what are Apple’s options?

Apple has had its share of mistakes in the past; however putting an onscreen keyboard could be one of those mistakes. Style, thumb-actuated onscreen keyboards work on screens up to about five inches, with the 4.3-inch-screened HTC Touch HD2’s keyboard straining even the most unsettlingly long thumbs. But to assume that this won’t work is to assume that the tablet is to be held a certain way, with hands at four and eight o-clock, more or less like a touchscreen phone in landscape mode.

A single, iPhone-esque keyboard really shouldn’t be the primary input method. It could be a supplementary input method, but to have two separate text input mechanisms seems messy. Messy doesn’t do to well with apple.

Another solution this problem could be voice control. Apple has been working on perfecting this technology since it introduced spoken interface for the OS X. as it stands the iPhone’s voice control speech recognition is much more accurate, and though there are quite a few customization options, it’s really just a command system, not a full text input system. Apple is very proud of the progress they have made on the Voice Control for the iPhone, and they haven’t removed voice commands from OS X in over five years. However using this type of system to control every function of the new tablet is highly unlikely.

The safest bet for Apple, in handling the input text problem is to come up with some sort of new onscreen keyboard. Any onscreen keyboard would have to be different than the iPhone’s somehow, but to say that Apple’s tablet will have a new style of keyboard is to say that it will have pretty much any kind of onscreen keyboard that is unlike the iPhone’s. Having a split onscreen keyboard isn’t new but it also isn’t something we see to often.

The best alternative is an actual, available product called DialKeys. Co-opted by Microsoft a few years ago, this tech, which splits the keyboard into two crescent-shaped virtual keyboards, shipped with a handful of touchscreen UMPCs, a category of devices that died off before it had the time to truly solve the onscreen keyboard problem. It wasn’t very good. But the concept had potential, maybe.

The biggest problem Apple has to face in the text input. There is no clear answer what route Apple will take. Apple has a way of taking existing technology and perfecting it. It seems, for know, the split onscreen keyboard is the best solution.

Apple Tablet Will Hit The Ground Running
Apple Tablet To Use verizon 3G Network
Apple Tablet / islate Could Be an All Out Computer.
Apple to Demo New Apple Tablet!

There is an enormous amount of hype about the Apple tablet computer. Is it possible the new apple tablet could change how we live and compute? Could there be more this tablet than hype and rumors? There is more to this new tablet than people think. Looking at the tablet with the perspective, the tablet could be the next step in the evolutionary chain of computing in our society. It could also be a turning point that makes a difference in how we live and work. Since computers have been around we have been trying to make them smaller, faster, lighter, and more useful to the consumer.

The technology industry hit high gear in the 70’s, when personal computers hit the desktops. Then another 20 years down the road when the laptop was introduced, making computers portable to the computing mix. Since the time of computers come around computers gone from the size of rooms to being able to fit inside of a brief case. Today most of us find it hard to get by without computers. They are in our everyday lives from designing websites to looking up direction to a new restaurant, and everything in between.

When smartphones hit the streets, suddenly we were carrying a real computer, able to run a wide range of applications (apps) and expanding different possibilities of communicating with a device not much lager than the average calculator. However the smartphones do have some drawbacks. The smartphone has a small touchscreen, and there isn’t much viewing area. Until we find better methods of typing and viewing characters we are going to have to use larger gadgets than the smartphone but smaller than the laptop.

The soon to be announced apple tablet could be the gadget that fills the void between to small smartphone and to large laptop. The larger size will allow apple to add more hardware which will allow better computing and give users more touchscreen on which to type and view. With these feature it is easy to see that this gadget is the middle of the road device that combines better portability than the laptop and better computing than the smartphones. As the methods of input and output become available and as miniaturization continues on its relentless path, we will see the increase in demand for a device similar in size to the iphone.

The apple tablet is just another step, to world were all our computing needs are on a portable device. Every aspect of our lives will be on some sort of mobile device, from grocery shopping to our business lives. The age of computing has change drastically. We have gone from computers the size of rooms to the size of calculators. Someday desktops and laptops will be a thing of the past. We will look back and think of a desktop as a dinosaur, Like DOS is to OS-X
Related Articles:
Apple Tablet Will Hit The Ground Running
Apple Tablet To Use verizon 3G Network
Apple Tablet / islate Could Be an All Out Computer.
Apple to Demo New Apple Tablet!

Last week a former senior marketing manager at apple posted an article “confirming” that the company does indeed purposely leak information in order to boost the buzz surrounding an upcoming product. The ex-apple in question John Martellaro, wrote the process that take place when apple leaks information about up coming products. In the article that ran in the wall street journal, claimed the apple tablet existed and would be announced in January and would be released in March. The article also describes the process of how apple uses controlled leaks. By using controlled leaks apples is able to release information that about a product without hurting its reputation, of never discussing pre-release products. On multiple occasions, Martellaro was told to leak information to the public.
In order for a leak to be successful, the company has to ensure there is a factor of deniability on all sides. Often times the information leak isn’t final. On many occasion the product will change before production actually occurs. If there is now way the information can be linked back to apple, both apple and the news outlets are protected against claims of having disseminated false information. Official leaks are published after the close of the stock market to avoid accusations of stock manipulation.
There are many reasons for apple or any other company to leak information about an upcoming product. In apple’s case they could have leak information about the price of $1,000 to test the waters and the reaction from possible consumers. Apple may want panic / confuse a potential competitor about whom apple had some knowledge.
The information is always leaked by phone or in person, never in emails. If there is any dispute about the information there wouldn’t be any paper trail to contradict and of the parties version of the story. A lot of times two representatives at the same outlet are contacted so it would be easier to point the finger at one another and follow up with a retraction.
Suspicions are one thing, but confirmation is another entirely. This look inside the extremely successful Apple information control mechanism is very helpful when it comes to sorting fact from fiction in the rumor mill.
Apple Tablet Will Hit The Ground Running
Apple Tablet To Use verizon 3G Network
Apple Tablet / islate Could Be an All Out Computer.
Apple to Demo New Apple Tablet!